A Currency as Good as Gold

The nifty thing about a gold-backed currency is: they aren't making any more gold. The alchemists have tried to make the stuff, but have failed. Of course, a currency can be backed by other precious metals, like silver. But the supply of those other metals isn't getting any bigger either. There's one huge exception, though, and that's when a star dies. All the heavy elements are created in the death throes of large stars, or so the theory goes. Therefore, we can rule out that any metal-backed currency will be debased, debauched and devalued by the sudden appearance of more precious metals like gold, at least until the next supernova.
All the world's gold that's been mined can fit into three Olympic-size swimming pools. And not only that, most of the easily-mined gold may already have been found. So just as some petroleum analysts say the planet is at Peak Oil, it's also at Peak Gold.
However, if miners were to discover another mother lode (such as in the Witwatersrand or Klondike...(Read Full Article)